Standard is strong/weak in this province or that province...

[Solo Run]

....is a silly way to analyse matches. Year in, year out, I hear the standard of this province or that province is poor - then someone (particularly journalists) use it as a basis for picking a winner. Well as a gambling man let me tell you if you place your money on one team over another based on the province they are from then you should be getting your application ready for Ocean Finance - it has no bearing whatsoever. Fact. I'll give you all the statstitics you like to prove how unrelaible a measure this is.

The average provincial standards are basically much of muchness. Ulster and Leinster will tend, over a period of time, to have more 'competitive' championships simply because they have more teams and for no other reason!! This 'competiveness' is a completely different thing from the 'standard' of play.

What annoys me about this is that journalists get paid good money to bring some insight into a match, then we get blah-blah-blah province is strong/weak therefore Team A will win. No mention of specific players, and how particular teams match-up against other teams in different areas of the field. We have the bar-room and discussion board experts who probably have never even seen the teams they are so expert on. I can forgive them but the media standard of analysis is atrocious and has no depth at all.

So as soon as you hear "well province A didn't have a good championship this year standard was poor......"  just remember our pundit friend hasn't got a clue.

[Dinny Breen]

Great post Solo run, completely agree that and ridiculous sweeping statements such as team will win by 15 points etc etc really grinds my gears..